Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr wants to be granted a Canadian passport to travel to Saudi Arabia to carry out the Hajj pilgrimage, his lawyers have said.
Khadr, 32, asked the Court of Queen’s Bench in Edmonton to apply for changes to his bail conditions which were imposed while he appeals war crime convictions by a US military commission.
He says in his affidavit that he would like to be able to speak on the phone or over Skype to his sister Zaynab Khadr. He is also asking to perform the Hajj.
“For this reason, I would like to apply for a Canadian passport,” he said in the document.
Zaynab was investigated in Canada more than a decade ago for her alleged terrorist ties, but she was never charged.
The affidavit says the impact of Khadr’s bail conditions are mainly psychological – a daily reminder of what he went through.
“I feel like the indefinite and potentially endless detention that I suffered in Guantanamo Bay is continuing,” he wrote. “I hope that there will be some end to this process, but there is none in sight.”
Khadr spent years in US detention at Guantanamo Bay after he was caught when he was 15 and accused of tossing a grenade that killed special forces soldier Christopher Speer at a militant compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
In 2010, he pleaded guilty in a deal he struck with the Pentagon in return for allowing him to spend the rest of his prison sentence in Canada, to which he was deported in 2012.
